target is a wonderland

Woke up early today to ensure my chances of trying on one of Prabal Gurung's pieces in the Target collection. Things were not at all crazy at the Daly City location, though Cabbage told me it was mayhem somewhere in Los Angeles. I did think it strange that the driver of this vehicle with a handicap placard was also waiting for the store to open but you know, maybe she was waiting for a prescription.

Not only did I get the adorable floral fit 'n' flare dress I wanted, I also found this cute pink piggy toy for Soleil. It's plush and it squeaks and it has rope legs... basicslly it's an all-in-one supertoy for my little dog. If I can make my dog and myself happt in one shopping trip, it's pretty much a win.

File this under "a blessing and a curse"

After stumbling across the revolvong discount museum of design junkies that is fab.com, I have ordered and received beautiful Turkish earrings, cute castellano travel accessories, and crazy red sunglasses that my mom hates. It is inspiring, fun, and "makes you smile" as fab likes to say. It is also a horrible curse because it is so hard to resist the cute things that weedle their way into my inbox... you'll see sickeningly cute food pillows in a couple of weeks.

Until then, it's back to scolding myself for faltering on the great save-up for my island vacation.

lluvia de estrellas

I love these galaxy tights from etsy's shadowplaynyc! They are beautiful and dreamy, and quite honestly one of the best-looking pieces of galaxy legwear on the market. Other "galaxy" tights or leggings look like really bad tie-dye but these are imprinted with photos taken from the Hubble telescope. The genuine image plus the miracle that they fit my thunder thighs makes them worth the $30+ price tag.

Speaking of tattered old tie-dye, that is exactly what my dear Mumsy thought I was wearing until I said "galaxy." Thanks Mom!

More fun at the dollar-fitty store

Is there anyplace more magical than Daiso/Ichiban Kan? I think I was at Daiso but it's hard to tell since they stock the same budget-friendly kitchenwares, candy, and household items you never knew you needed.

Among the plastic brooms and engrish-laced stationery I found this adorable mug of a very naughty cat... I guess missing goldfish is an international epidemic.

haven't even made it through the door

Mumsy meets plants she can't leave behind at Trader Joe's. $70 of a $150 receipt are spent on plants.

A bit of a mixup

I'm not saying that kicking cancer's ass isn't great, just saying that this isn't the custom cap I ordered for a friend. It's even funnier when you consider that I paid for expedited production of the cap and, well, this is what I got! This didn't happen last time I ordered a custom cap from Lids.com...

Sorry fellow customer, I have your order!

Someone in Pennsylvania is probably wondering who Mr. Pagan is.

Jesusbread

It's been years snce I last ventured into a Whole Foods grocery store... past adventures usually involved my militantly vegan friend from high school. But after salsa class I followed my co-workers inside and found this:

I call it Jesusbread and I consider it essential for any Biblical reenactment.

As one co-worker and salsa aficionado noted, this is the sort of thing people move to this country to get away from.

kitty love

If the blissful catnip flavor worked for Johnny, then it would work for Hitler Jackie, right?

She bites... but does it work?

Nope, she's hissing as much as ever.

ending a shopping day with a Sergio Romo strikeout

Go Giants! One win away!

Before all of that wonderfulness happened, Tater and I were busy on our long-awaited shopping trip. We hit up the brand new Uniqlo and City Target, quirky Ambiance, and recently remodeled and 20%-off-everything Old Navy. And before that, Mumsy and I paid a visit to the Petco Unleased at Westlake. Soleil loves her new Angry Birds toy, and I love all of the investments I acquired.

L: Angry Birds two-headed squeaky toy
R: polka-dotted jeans and tights from Old Navy

adorable navy lace cutout dress from Ambiance

super bright and lightweight water-repellent yellow jacket from Uniqlo
with a generous hood and length.
The downside about Uniqlo is that all the cool colors and styles
are in the men's section.
This is a men's style jacket, but I don't care.
It was only $40 (regularly $80.)

Ad yes, just as Tater and I wound down with a drink at the Pied Piper Bar in the Palace Hotel, we witnessed Gregor Blanco make yet another amazing catch and Sergio Romo close out yet another game. We are one step away, Giants, but how many tries will it take us?

Aussie style

Australian style (good style, not those Uggs) has landed and I am all for it! Cotton On is sort of like H&M in the sense that it is thrifty fast-fashion, though Cotton On is a bit more basic and doesn't offer all of the European-esque trappings (uncomfortably worded soliloquies about fashion, strangers' faces on a shirt, monochromatic ensembles) you may stumble upon at H&M. Typo is the brand's stationery outpost and it's like Papyrus but with a more youthful and irreverent bent. What I love about both stores is that the prices never hurt, and when things are on sale, it's almost like stealing. Legal stealing.

Among the cards and magazine organizers at Typo, I picked up this fawn figurine I've been eyeing. Regularly $20, now $5! Come to mama, Bambi!

Who's a baby deer!?

Dear Mumsy was the first to tell me about the good-quality clothes with budget prices at Cotton On. The dress on the left was marked down from $25 to $15. The striped number on the right wasn't on sale but still a deal at $15, given that the stripes are all lined up at the seams and the cotton is thick enough to not tell passerby the color of your underwear.

Bonus: both dresses are long enough to walk confidently down the street. This is the cure to that infection of too-short dresses and skirts afflicting America!

one for one

These are the only shoes I'm buying for fall. Promise!

L: TOMS desert bootie
R: TOMS classic with pewter sequins!

be the rainbow

Now that I have pants in enough colors to make the Care Bears happy, I'm sure Anna Wintour will scramble to place colored jeans in the "Out" bin.

But who cares, wear what you love!

Got me some Roy G. BPV, because why get indigo - the unwanted child of blue and black - when you can have pink?

fun at tarjay

Tater and I had too much fun at Target. We originally went to check out the new Patch NYC capsule collection for the fall installment of The Shops at Target. We left with so much more.

stag cake platter 24.99
4 highball glasses 19.99
4 dessert plates 19.99

First, the much-awaited dinnerware. I love animals (big surprise!) so I was thrilled that one of the boutiques designed entertainment-ware with an animal theme. And since these pieces are in classy black, white, and gold, you don't have to be kooky like me to appreciate these furry friends.

But on to our furry friends... I can't help buying a packet or two of these Temptations cat treats whenever I pass through the pet care aisles. But I have never seen these flavors before...

L: Blissful Catnip flavor
R: Catnip Fever (chicken, catnip, and cheddar flavors)

I'm loving the choice of words ("blissful catnip") and imagery (rainbow afro on a chicken that's happy to be devoured!) I wonder if these are the key for getting Johnny Cat to warm up to the little ball of energy that is Soleil.

And to conclude our animal safari at Target, Tater and I wound up at the sleepwear section where we tried on fantastic animal-themed onesies by cutesy design label Nick & Nora. This is the shark onesie I took home:

don't you hate it when you blog from your smartphone and the photos
turn out sideways? I sure do.

This 24.99 investment in joy is soft, fuzzy, warm, comfortable, and one of the craziest cute things I have ever had the pleasure of wearing. I love the attention to detail, like how their is a strip of elastic at the ankle to keep the footsies in place and how my feet are decked out in shark finery...

Shake your tail fin, baby!

Tater purchased the striped sock monkey onesie, which is probably the one that will sell out first. I should know because they didn't have my size in store :(

However, not all of the onesies are this cute. This hot mess was left on the rack, and if anyone thinks that leopard prints are always sexy, this is how you counter:

If I could live at Target, I would!

Cheesy fail

Sur la Table was selling a DIY mozzarella kit at abour $10 less than the kit at Williams-Sonoma. What can I say, I certainly couldn't pass up a chance to make my own cheese!

Things started out okay... I warmed up a gallon of milk and added the citric acid and rennet as directed. But maybe the milk cooked too long, maybe I stirred things too much, but whatever I ended up with, it sure wasn't cheese.

The kit...

The gallon...

The agents...

The whey...

The curds...

The fail...

I'll stick to buying my mozzarella from the store!

hello thrifty

I am not a fan of wearing Hello Kitty on my person. Oh sure, I used to work for the mouthless cat. I still have a few stickers lying around and she is my go-to when I need a present for a young girl. But if I need or want to dress up with a Sanrio character, give me Keroppi or Chococat. Hello Kitty is too girly.

I am also not big on wearing the American flag. I have seen so many bad sartorial attempts on Old Glory - from oversized blouses to a five-year old's finger painting on nasty denim cutoffs - that I have simply written it off. No, a tasteful representation of the old Stars and Strips cannot be found on clothing.

Then, of all places, JCPenney laid both taboos to rest with this shirt.

Somehow these hearts and stripes feel vaguely like the US flag without being overpoweringly so. And Hello Kitty helps to break up the solid lines with, well, her cuteness, all without being too princessy. It's my new favorite tee, and I'll be proudly wearing this in Colombia.

Somehow, through the magic of Mr. Penney, this $10 shirt only cost me $5. Woohoo!

a new galaxy

I'm trying something new today... I'm blogging from my new smrtphone! The process is slower and more unwieldy than my good old desktop but I think it's about time I tried something from this millenium.

There are issues... nothing makes me realize how much I love traditional keyboards than my amateur smartphone typing "skills." Or the fact that I accidentally deleted the photo I uploaded earlier and I can't find the equivalent of CTRL+Z on this smartphone. Also, I don't know how to copy and paste so I probably won't be linking each post to the blog's facebook page over the phone.

My new Galaxy and my old Chocolate...
re-added via my trusty desktop computer after the above mishap.

Anyways, on to other things. My beloved chocolate phone began to run out of battery power every night, leaving me with one less alarm for the morning. Well, I guess 4 years is a good run for a second generation mobile phone. So yesterday I asked a friend for advice and marched into the Verizon store. This girl was on a mission and nothing was going to stop her!

After many questions and a short tutorial, I left with the Samsung Galaxy S3. I picked the Galaxy for the awesome camera because frankly, if I'm going to spend this much money, I want this device to do double duty. Perhaps even triple duty as a backup computer, but first I'll need some more practice on this tiny keyboard.

By the way, this old camera was purchased in 2005. Replacing a 4-year old phone and a 7-year old camera in one go ain't half bad!

The limited-edition Harajuku Girls camera designed by Gwen Stefani,
when her first solo album made her my idol.
Picture taken by my smartphone!

(And now more text from the comfort of my equally-old PC...)

There's a lot to learn, and a lot of connections I never wanted but I'll need to accept in order to use the smartphone. For one, Verizon/Android/something insisted I sync my gmail account if I want to use blogger on my phone. That sucks because my gmail account is not my principal account and I really use it just to blog. Also, syncing two email accounts with my phone added a lot of unnecessary "contacts," most without phone numbers and therefore something I would not consider a contact. It also brought back citizens of my very old address book, some people with whom I haven't had contact in over ten years and others whom I don't even remember. I guess I was lucky that I only had to delete 200... well, not quite. My phone says I cannot delete "read-only" contacts. Well as my phone, I'll tell you who I want to delete, and you'll like it!

This whole connectivity thing also unevenly dug up photos associated with my two blogs and loaded them into picasa, which I have never used but must be owned by google because why else would they mysteriously appear on my phone? And for some unknown reason, I cannot upload photos I took with my phone to blog posts I made with my phone unless I accept and add google+. Fine, google, collect my information and use it for your evil plans. Just let me hide in a cave when you take over the world.

Last complaint: why does every new phone come with predictive text turned on? And why are they making it more difficult to turn it off by making you weave through a convoluted tribulation of settings? Honestly, who actually needs predictive text? I don't need to accidentally send a message about "sex" when all I wanted to say that "texting is hard" on my new phone!

But really, after just over 24 hours I think I am warming up to the oversized phone. With this I'll be able to snap pictures more easily while I travel and blog (albeit poorly) on the road. I can check my email at any time, though I certainly don't feel the urge to. But the important thing is that the option is there. And, I've waited so long to get a smartphone that Angry Birds is free!

if neon was a color...

In a break from my recent trend of orange shoes, I fell in love with this waterfall hue of Converse sneakers. To make it more, er, me, I got a pack of neon shoelaces. Quite spiffy, don't you think?

Now my feet can dress up like watermelons!

new record

This might be my personal best for knitting a blanket... I started this blue striped beauty in April, setting an even more ambitious deadline for early May to give to my sister for her wedding. Well, I only had one-third finished by the big day and my loving sister had no interest for such things in Los Angeles. So I decided to keep it for myself but keep knitting and see how quickly I could finish a throw (my last project took me almost a year to complete! And Mumsy keeps it in a box under the bed!)

Not only did I complete this blanket in just over three months (finishing just yesterday) I believe that this is also the largest blanket I have ever knit... I can lay down comfortably on it and not touch the floor so I know that it's at least 65 inches long.

This blanket is staying with me and will grace my convertible sofa, where it will be seen!

Well, there's no break for me. Not that knitting is a chore, I enjoy it quite a bit (otherwise I wouldn't knit!) But my dear friend Chikorita is already 5 months pregnant with a baby boy and I'm set on knitting a baby blanket to resemble the flag of Peru (the homeland of both parents.) The yellow border is supposed to be that gold rim you sometimes see on some flags... well, the more I think about it, the more I realize that I've only seen gold fringe on flags of the USA. Looks like Peru is getting the royal treatment from me!

Just gettin' crafty. Again.

GIR, ride the pig!

So a little alien told his companion on a long-gone Nickelodeon cartoon known as Invader Zim.

Now this isn't a pig that most people can ride but I think it is just as nifty... this summertime miniature pig-shaped grill from Cost Plus World Market is as useful as it is kitschy and adorable. The terra cotta piggy is available only in stores and I snagged the last one on the display. These little piggies are selling like hotcakes!

The pig itself fits in a loving embrace and at my estimate, the small grill can cook 2 small hamburger patties or a handful of hot dogs at a time. Or a plateful of little smokies. The point is that this little piggy is meant to cook for a little party. Most reviews on Cost Plus's website give the little oinker 5 stars and rave that the charcoal-powered grill is perfect for cooking for two.

Now that piggy is finally out of my trunk and in the giddy arms of my friend who just bought a new condo, piggy will most likely spend the Fourth of July sunning himself or herself (she hasn't named it yet) on the small patio and cooking a hot dog or two.

And me? I'll be hoping that Cost Plus World Market gets another shipment of these because at just $25 a pig, I want a whole farm.

can't get enough cuteness

A few cute things I've picked up for myself...

First it was ice cream, then the whoopie pies I've been baking for about two years. Now I'm not saying that I'll never make these again - we're having an unusual spell of sunny weather that's just begging me to whip out the old ice cream maker - but I have found a new book full of cute and saccharine things to make...

MARSHMALLOWS! I always find the cutest little one-hit wonder cookbooks on fredflare.com.

All I need is a candy thermometer and I'm good to go. Look out for these puffed up creations soon!

On another cute note, I've been eyeing this bag from Loungefly. It's covered in gnomes, squirrels, tulips, and mushrooms and quite honestly, it garners more compliments than my Valentino.

Oh look, Loungefly is offering 20% off when you enter the promotional code "summer12" at checkout!

Kitschy cuteness galore! Remember to stick to your personal style!